VLC and automatic subtitles?

Solution 1:

Sublight automatically downloads subtitles, it works well with movies but I don't how good it works with TV shows, and it's a standalone software not a VLC plugin.

Solution 2:

LUA script (Subtitle downloader) to search and download subtitles directly in VLC: here.

Solution 3:

Extensions did recently become a part of VLC, but there is currently very little information floating around about them. I do recall seeing a subtitles extension in the nightlies a while ago, but it didn't work at the time. Perhaps that's worth a look.

There are a couple of applications out there for this purpose:

SubDownloader -- Open source, cross-platform but shareware on Windows (?!). Last I checked it didn't work, presumably due to an API change. When it did work it was pretty good.
Sublight -- Windows only.
SolEol -- Cross-platform, broken last I checked.
FileBot -- Cross-platform

~~I haven't found a solution that I like yet, so I decided to slowly develop my own. Currently I use a combination of Google, OpenSubtitles and TVsubtitles.~~ I recently tested FileBot and found it to work very well.

Solution 4:

VLSub is coming as part of the VLC package now and works with VLC 2.2 (Also with VLC 2.0.x., but not with 2.1.x. In 2.0.x the addon must be installed manually.)

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Can be also found on the Videolan addons page, here.

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How to install lua scripts in vlc:

Windows (all users): %ProgramFiles%\VideoLAN\VLC\lua\extensions.

Linux (current user): ~/.local/share/vlc/lua/extensions/.

Mac OS X (all users): /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/share/lua/extensions/

You may even try to download subtitles when playing an internet video stream in VLC. After the video has started in VLC, start VLSub, put the proper name of the film, and download (see that 'Load and save' is selected in Configs).

An error message may appear saying that the subtitles cannot be saved. Then: 'Click here to open the file'. That will download the subtitles (maybe archived).

This may vary between VLSub versions. A VLC error window may open instead of the error message in the VLSub window. Then, click 'Show config', then 'VLsub working directory' which opens a folder where the subtitle file should be.

Solution 5:

I was looking into this isssue the other day and I found out that it can be done by using LUA-scripts. Here is the page on the VideoLan-forum which talks about subtitles.

Hope that this was what you were looking for.